Pages

Friday, July 11, 2014

Pork Loin and the Weekly Specials with Mary Anne

Finally! Some good prices! Kroger did the best this week,
with good prices on produce, meat and dairy. I’ll get to the grocery store ads
in just a sec, but don’t forget to get your Market Bucks for the Farmers Market
and buy your produce there for half price! Applies to those with food stamps
only.

Kroger has blueberries for 99 cents a pint. Peaches, plums
and nectarines are all 99 cents a pound. Four pounds of strawberries are $4.99,
or $1.25 per pound; smaller boxes cost more per pound. Bananas are 39 cents a
pound. Sweet corn is 10 ears for $3.00, or 30 cents an ear. It’s Indiana sweet
corn. Zucchini and yellow squash are 99 cents a pound. Milk is $1.88 a gallon,
limit two. Eggs are $1.29 a dozen. Kroger “singles” (processed cheese) is $1.99
for 16 slices, but it doesn’t say how big the slices are. Chicken of the Sea
canned tuna is 69 cents for a 5-oz can. Boneless pork loin is $1.77 per pound,
limit two packages. Prices are good through next Wednesday, July 16.

Marsh has boneless skinless chicken breasts for $1.99 per
pound. 9-ounce smoked sausage is four for $5.00, or $1.25 each. Prices are good
through next Wednesday, July 16.

IGA has peaches for 99 cents a pound. Tomatoes on the vine
are $1.49 a pound. Cabbage is 49 cents a pound. Salad dressings are 99 cents
for a 16-ounce bottle. Hamburger and hotdog buns are 99 cents for a package of
eight. Ground chuck is $2.99 a pound in packs of three or more pounds. Prices
are good through Sunday, July 13.

Aldi has blueberries for 99 cents a pint (two cups or about
12 ounces). Red grapes, peaches, plums and nectarines are all $1.98 for a
2-pound package, or 99 cents a pound. Mangos are 39 cents each and avocados are
69 cents each. Cherries are $1.99 a pound. Bone in chicken thighs are 89 cents
a pound in packs of three pounds or more. Prices are good through next Tuesday,
July 15.

By the way, here are some equivalent measurements for some
of this week’s produce. A “medium” tomato weighs about 6 ounces half a cup of
finely diced tomato, or about a cup of chopped tomato, or about one and a
quarter cups of sliced tomato. (There’s about a tablespoon of tomato in a
cherry tomato, which weighs about one ounce.) A pint (two cups) of blueberries
is about 12 ounces. A “medium” peach weighs about 3 to 4 ounces. You get about
two-thirds of a cup of chopped peaches or three-fourths of a cup of sliced
peaches from one peach. That’s about two and half cups of either chopped or
sliced peaches per pound. These are all from howmuchisin.com .

With pork loin for $1.77 a pound at Kroger, let’s see what
we can do with that this week. I don’t think I’ve talked about pork loin in a
long time. Check out pork loin and pork chop recipes here andhere, or find a list of all the pork recipes under the MEAT heading here.

You can either cook pork loin as roasts or you can slice it
up (or have it sliced up) as chops. You’ve heard of pork loin chops? That’s
just the pork loin that’s been cut into slices. The loin that’s on sale is
boneless, so you’ll end up with boneless chops. You can use a recipe that calls
for bone-in pork chops, but the cooking time will be a bit different. Of
course, you can also cut it up into cubes or chunks if that’s what your recipe
calls for

A bit of quick math. A pound and a half is 24 ounces, or six
ounces each for four servings. That’s plenty; in fact, the nutrition gurus
would tell you that you only need 3 ounces. (I can’t help but wonder how much
they really eat themselves.) If you’re like me, when you cook a two pound roast
when you only need a pound and a half, it’s all likely to be eaten. Ask the
butcher if he’ll cut the package into one or more one and a half pound roasts
and the rest into roughly six ounce chops. If he won’t, or if you forget, you
can do it yourself, but the butcher may be more accurate about the weights and
will probably be better at cutting chops that are of uniform thickness.

CUBAN PORK is
sort of like Mexican carnitas, or at least like some recipes I have seen for carnitas. The cubes of pork are cooked in a mixture of fat and liquid (sour
orange juice in this case, or a mixture of orange juice and lime juice), and
then they fry in the fat when the liquid has simmered off. They end up crispy
on the outside and moist and tender on the inside. A batch costs about a bit
less than $4.00 if you use orange juice and lime juice. Add corn on the cob andcoleslaw (either your recipes or one
of ours) and it comes to just $6.00.

Pork and blueberries is a trendy combination, and with
blueberries on sale again this week (99 cents a pint at both Kroger and Aldi)
as well as the pork loin at Kroger, it seems like I should include a recipe.
Personally, though, I’d rather eat my blueberries on their own. Not that I have
anything against blueberries and pork, but if I have just a limited number of
blueberries (aka a limited budget), I’d rather have them separately. I almost
decided not to include a recipe, because most of the recipes I found either called for frozen
blueberries or else frozen blueberries would work just as well. No point wasting
fresh blueberries when frozen ones will do. But then I found this recipe for GRILLED PORK CHOPS WITH BLUEBERRY SALSA
and decided it was worthy of fresh blueberries. (The BLUEBERRY SALSA should be good with chicken or turkey, too.) I had to guess at the price of
some of the ingredients, but I think the
pork chops and salsa will come to something like $5.40, which doesn’t leave
much room for anything else. I’m going to include corn on the cob (grilled if
you’re grilling the pork chops, boiled or nuked if you’re not) anyway, which
brings the total to about $6.60, which is a bit higher than I like. Make my 50 Cent Breakfast (below) or another of my BUDGET BREAKFASTS and it will bring the
total cost for the day back down to where it belongs.

If you’re
looking to cook the pork loin as a roast, try HERB ROASTED PORK LOIN. I don’t know whether it would work to use
fresh herbs, but it seems a shame to use dried ones this time of year. (Do you
grow your own? They’re easy to grow. I have a small planter with a variety of herbs
that I move outside in the summer and inside in the winter.) Anyway, there’s
practically no cost to this other than the pork itself, which will run about
$2.65. Let’s call it an even $3.00, with the garlic and oil. (Don’t forget that
it’s usually cheaper to buy herbs and spices in bulk at Bloomingfoods rather than in the little jars at the
grocery store.) Serve it with ZUCCHINI/TOMATOTOSS ($1.40) and twelve ounces of peaches (about a cup and a half) mixed
with a cup and a half of blueberries (total cost of the peaches and blueberries
- $1.50) and have a summery meal for four for less than $6.00.

50 Cent Breakfasts

With milk on
sale for $1.88 a gallon, a cup of milk (and thus a cup of yogurt) costs 12
cents. A pound of peaches (99 cents) makes about two and a half cups of chopped
peaches at 25 cents for a little more than half cup. So a cup of yogurt and a
bit more than half a cup of peaches costs less than 40 cents, even if you
decide to sprinkle a bit of sugar on it. Or you can make a PEACH SMOOTHIE for about 45 cents.